Heaven Rules over Earthly Kingdoms

Mary Kassian: Good morning you beautiful women, precious daughters of the Most High King. Isn’t that amazing?

This is a recent photo of my mum and dad—awww. This year we celebrated my mum’s ninety-fourth and my dad’s ninety-seventh birthdays. And to me, they have been a living example of what it means to know that Heaven rules.

You see, my dad was born and raised in the German Province of East Prussia, in the majestic Baltic city of Königsberg. Königsberg in German means “King’s Mountain.” It was named that because it was the home to the kings of the German Empire who lived in the castle that was situated just a stone’s throw from my dad’s house.

Just before my dad was born, the monarchy was overthrown, ending the reign of German kings, and Germany became a Democratic Republic. But the political situation was highly unstable because numerous fledgling political parties vied for control.

The Communist party and Hitler’s Workers’ party often clashed on the streets in violent BLM-type marches and riots, several of which took place on the street across from Dad’s house. The political tension was heightened by the economic hardship and the food shortages of the Great Depression, out-of-control inflation, and the repressive stipulations of the Treaty of Versailles.

My grandma tried to shield her young son from all the political ruckus by drawing the curtains and turning up the music. But he knew that trouble was afoot.

When a small group of Communist trouble makers set fire to the Reichstag building, the Germany equivalent of The White House, Hitler exploited the attack to his own advantage. He claimed that the Communists were domestic terrorists who were plotting to overthrown the German government. He convinced the German congress to pass a decree, an emergency act, to temporarily suspend civil liberties and grant Hitler dictatorial powers to get the threat under control.

And just like that, Germany morphed from a democracy into a fascist dictatorship.

My dad was just eight years old when that happened. But nonetheless, he could sense that a massive political shift had just happened. He heard the old man at the coffee shop whispering about the Unternehmen Kolibri, “the night of the long knives,” when Hitler murdered more than 100 political opponents and imprisoned a hundred more.

He watched Kristelnacht unfold before his eyes as the SA set fire to the Jewish synagogue and orphanage just across the street, the place where he used to scale the fence to play with the boys.

The German people were henceforth subjected to relentless propaganda, censorship, surveillance, and forced compliance by the political elite. People feared what would happen to them if they went against the politically correct narrative.

Free speech was suppressed. Anyone who didn’t toe the line was canceled and punished. Dissidents were roughed up, hauled off to jail, or just mysteriously disappeared.

My dad was seventeen when he was drafted into Hitler’s army. Eventually, he was sent to the Eastern Front to fight in one of the final and most bloody battles of World War II. His unit was decimated. He was captured by the Russians. Marched to Auschwitz/Birkenau, the infamous concentration camp the Red Army had repurposed as a holding camp for German POW.

From there, over the months, prisoners were corralled into putrid railway cars and shipped to the Russian gulags. In the gulags, he experienced unspeakable atrocities. Red Cross records indicate that of the 40,000 men taken into one camp, only eleven came out alive, and my father was one of them.

Nearly dead from malnutrition and tuberculosis, he was shipped to a border town in Communist East Germany. After he recovered, he became part of the underground, risking his life to smuggle people across the border to escape the repressive Communist regime. He smuggled my mother’s family out of East Germany. Then he tracked her down in West Germany and married her.

Mum and Dad were refugees, the lowest of the low. They weren’t accepted by the locals, who resented their presence, but they couldn’t go back home. Indeed, there was no home left to go back to. Königsberg had been incinerated and reduced to rubble by allied bombs. The castle was no more.

The remaining residents were killed, raped, humiliated, tortured, and starved as the Red army ethnically cleansed the city of Germans. Some say the purge was the largest exodus of people in human history.

The city of kings, Königsberg was no more, which is why, when the Lutheran church offered free boat tickets for refugees for relocation, my dad seized the opportunity to take his growing family and immigrate to Canada.

Why do I tell you this? Because all of my life, I have sensed the ache in my father’s spirit, an underlying sadness, a vacuum, a homesick longing for the home that no longer is. But I’ve also witnessed his unshakable belief that God is in control when politicians are out of control, even when political forces radically change the direction of our lives.

My dad’s story has remarkable similarities to a story of the young man in the book of Daniel that Nancy talked about last night. Daniel, Hananiah, Mishael, and Azariah who, likewise, were caught up in geopolitical events that were beyond their control.

The central theme of my message this morning is that Heaven rules over all earthly kings and kingdoms.

• How do we face a changing political landscape?
• How do we retain our equilibrium when rulers are ungodly and oppressive and when their decisions negatively impact our lives?
• How do we find strength to take a stand when everyone else is bowing, knowing that the consequences of doing so may be dire?
• How do we respect authority but not compromise our morals?
• How do we survive in a hostile political environment?
• How do we live in Babylon but keep Babylon from living in us?

These are questions that the four young men taken into captivity to Babylon undoubtedly wrestled with. And they are questions that you and I need to wrestle with as well.

Turn with me in your Bibles to Psalm chapter 2. Psalm 2 is one of the royal psalms. It was written to celebrate the coronation of the king of Israel and Judah. Daniel and his three friends—Hananiah, Mishael, and Azariah—would have been familiar with this psalm. According to rabbinic tradition, these four youths were of royal blood. They were descendants of King Hezekiah. They were friends, but they were also relatives, cousins or distant cousins of some sort.

Daniel confirms that the young men Nebuchadnezzar expropriated were Jewish royals and nobles. They were up-and-coming celebrities in Jerusalem, rising stars, healthy, strong, good looking, and smart. The press covered them the way that the press here covers the royals. They’re a fascination amongst the public.

Scripture tells us they were skillful in all wisdom, endowed with knowledge, understanding, learning and competence, and this was before the king expropriated them to Babylon.

These four young royals were educated in Jewish royal fashion. Therefore, they would have been well versed in the history of the Jews, in the Torah, and in the psalms. Their royal tutors would have had them study and perhaps even memorize Psalm, chapter 2 because the coronation psalm was of particular importance to the royal family. It was the psalm they sung or heard recited at the coronation of their two uncles, Jehoahaz and Jehoiakim.

The psalm opens with the question: why? ”Why do the nations rage?”

And given what these young men lived through, I’m sure that they often asked the “Why?” questions.

• Why is this happening?
• Why is the world so messed up?
• Why do the people in charge do such hurtful and evil things?
• Why are we at the mercy of power-hungry bullies?

They had good reason to shake their heads about the political events that had unfolded during their lifetimes.

The Holy Land was a magnet for conflict. That’s because Judah was located on a narrow strip of land connecting the continents of Africa and Asia. 

All the major military and trade routes ran through Judah. The Jews often found themselves at the mercy of superpowers who wanted to exert control over these routes and benefit economically from the trade and taxing of goods.

For centuries the Assyrian empire was the superpower that kept Judah and everyone else in the region under its thumb. The Assyrian king made all the other kingdoms his vassals, forcing them to pay tribute, that is taxes and gifts. Judah was subjugated and so was Babylonia, Media, Persia and Egypt.

Assyrian records indicate that King Hezekiah once sent a convoy to the Assyrian king with thirty talents of gold, 800 talents of silver, jewels, precious medals, a large assortment of valuable treasures, couches of ivory, elephants’ hides and tusks as well as virgins for his harem and dancers and male and female singers. That is a staggering amount of money and goods. Thirty talents is more than a ton of gold. Eight hundred talents is more than thirty tons of silver.

The convoy stretched out like the trucker convoy—miles and miles of camels and carts of Judah’s wealth being sent off as payoff to the Assyrian king.

Assyria was like the big bully at school who terrorized all the other kids, threatening, “Give me your lunch money or I’m going to beat you up.” It wasn’t an idle threat.

When the Northern Kingdom of Israel refused to pay tribute, Assyria obliterated its capital, exiled tens of thousands of people, and annexed the region as an Assyrian province. The ten tribes were scattered. The Northern Nation of Israel ceased to exist.

Why do the nations rage?

If I were to plot the lives of the four young royals on a timeline, you would see how much political turmoil they lived through. There was a whole lot of raging going on.

When the four friends were born, Assyria was the biggest bully on the block. But then Nebuchadnezzar’s father, a Babylonian general, rebelled and took down the Assyrian capital. The four royals were about eight years old at the time. Good news. Right?

But, wait . . . not so fast. What about that saying, “Better the devil you know than the devil you don’t”? Egypt came storming up through Judah to help Assyria fight back. King Josiah tried to stop the Egyptian king from getting through, but he was killed in battle. And for the next few years, Egypt became the bully that bossed Judah around. Not good.

Things didn’t get any better when Babylon defeated Egypt to become the world’s next undisputed superpower. In fact, for those four young royals, things got much, much worse.

To flex his muscles and secure his position, Nebuchadnezzar attacked Jerusalem. He told his chief eunuch to scope out the talent stack and identify the cream of the crop so he could expropriate the best and the brightest to serve in his kingdom. Their presence in Babylon would guarantee the good behavior of the Judean king.

Can you imagine how those fourteen and fifteen and sixteen-year-olds felt when they were selected and shackled for the long trip to Babylon? Against their will they were torn away from their homes, their families, their place of worship, their community, and their culture. Exiled.

When they got to Babylon, the chief eunuch stripped them of their identities. He changed their names to ones that honored the Babylonian gods. And what’s worse, he subjected them to one of the most shameful and humiliating medical procedures anyone could inflict on a Jewish man. He made them eunuchs. They were castrated so they would never father children. Then he immersed them in the culture of Babylon.

They were given Babylonian haircuts, Babylonian wardrobes, Babylonian-furnished suites. They began to listen to Babylonian music, read Babylonian books. They were introduced to Babylonian gods, Babylonian Netflix, Babylonian spas and night clubs and all the other many riches and pleasures and indulgences that Babylon had to offer, which were many.

For three years they received the best Babylonian education, including, no doubt, a healthy dose of politically-correct Babylonian propaganda. The aim was to brainwash them into a Stockholm syndrome mindset that they might become enamored with their captors and completely turn their backs on their Jewish heritage.

And most of the exiles did just that. But Daniel, Hananiah, Mishael, and Azariah remained faithful to the Lord their God. I believe that Psalm 2 helped them.

Psalm 2 is a poem composed of four stanzas. Each stanza contains a foundational truth that helped these young royals stay grounded in times of extreme political upheaval and pressure. These truths can also help us stay grounded when our politicians do crazy things.

Stanza 1, verses 1–3:

Why do the nations rage and the peoples plot in vain?
The kings of the earth set themselves,
and the rulers take counsel together,
against the LORD and against his Anointed, saying,
“Let us burst their bonds apart and cast their cords from us.”

Peter explains in the book of Acts that when King David penned this psalm, he did so under the power of the Holy Spirit, and that the anointed king this psalm talks about is primarily God’s Son, Jesus Christ.

The opening stanza asks the “why question.”

“Why do nations rage?”

• Why do governments and politicians connive and collaborate and plot and scheme to pass foolish and harmful laws?
• Why do they do morally reprehensible things?
• Why do they view God’s directives as restrictive bonds and cords that need to be thrown off?
• Why do they rebel against the Lord and against His anointed King, Jesus Christ?
• Why do they fail to recognize Him as Boss?

I must admit that I’ve had a hard go of it these past few years, watching all the political upheaval and theatrics and observing the government response to various matters. COVID, obviously, being at the top of the list.

I don’t know what things were like here, but my government went into crazy dictatorship mode.

• Mums were fined for taking their kids to the playground.
• Teenagers were arrested for playing outdoor hockey.
• We could go to Walmart and Costco with the throngs, but for more than a year we couldn’t go to church. 
• The fear and the oppression were palpable. Pastors that opened their churches for worship were taken down by SWAT teams and dragged off and imprisoned.
• We were told who we could have in our homes, even who we could have in our cars.
• The hateful rhetoric and sanctions against those who were hesitant to take the vaccine was stupefying.
• People lost their jobs.
• People lost their families.
• People lost their minds.

On Valentine’s Day, Justin Trudeau, the Prime Minister of Canada evoked the Emergency Act to shut down the truckers who were apparently trying to overthrow the government with bouncing castles and honking horns. (laughter)

The Emergency Act is a wartime measure. Essentially, it suspends all civil liberties and puts the country into a state of martial law. It gives the Prime Minister and his police force unfettered power to spy on people, storm into their houses, arrest them, throw them in jail, and seize their bank accounts without due process and for no reason whatsoever except that the government suspects they might be an enemy of the state.

And for me, it was deja vu to what happened in Germany in my father’s day.

I’m a mild asthmatic, and when I heard the news, I could not breathe. I went into an asthma panic attack that was so severe that my husband had to call the paramedics because I was on the floor. I could not breathe.

Why? Why do the nations rage?

Politics is the favored topic around our dinner table, so it’s not surprising that two of my sons got degrees in History and Political Science. My oldest son, Clark, went on to become a lawyer. I distinctly remember a phone conversation I had with him last year. I was lamenting about the decisions our politicians were making and how destructive and increasingly oppressive they were.

Why are they doing this?
Didn’t they study history?
Don’t they know where this will lead?

Why?

And after a few moments of political ranting on my part, there’s a moment of silence, and then, “Mum,” said my ever-calm and logical eldest, “Why do you ask ‘Why?’ Name me the rulers and empires throughout history that have not tended to drift toward power-hungry, heavy-handed oppression, because without Christ, that’s what ungodly rules do. You know this.”

I raised him right. (laughter)

The “why?” in this opening stanza is a rhetorical question because the answer is self-evident. And the first truth is that politics magnifies the underlying spiritual battle. The question always boils down to who gets to make the rules. Who is boss? Who is boss over me?

It’s a spiritual question that’s as old as time. So that the serpent brought up the matter with Eve in the Garden.

Door number one: You get to be boss. You’ve got the rights and the smarts to govern.

Door number two: God gets to be boss. He’s got the right and the smarts to govern.

Eve picked door number one. “I get to be boss.” And ever since, humanity has lived with the ugly consequences of that decision.

We have a magnifying glass that lies as a décor item on top of some books in the center of my family room coffee table. My grandkids love playing with it. They hold it up to look at various objects, and then they squeal with astonishment. “It’s bigger! It’s bigger!”

Politics is like a magnifying glass. When a politician chooses a door, the consequences of that decision are bigger because their policy decisions impact more people. And the temptation toward pride and lording it over others, that comes with any position of authority, is difficult to resist.

The four royals were well-versed in the history of their family tree. They knew that if they were to highlight all the evil kings with the red marker, the good kings with the green marker, and the ones who were a mixed bag with yellow, the predominant color would be red.

Uncle Josiah who was king when they were kids was a good king. But Great-Grandpa Manasseh’s reign was evil. It was downright ugly. Manasseh slaughtered innocent people. Anyone who disagreed with him (sound of neck slicing) dead. The rabbis said that he martyred his maternal grandpa, the prophet Isaiah. He cut him in half with a saw because he didn’t like what he had to say.

The author of the Hebrew’s faith hall of fame may have been alluding to Isaiah when he mentioned the hero of faith who was sawn in two.

Crazy Great-Grandpa Manasseh even sacrificed his baby boy to a pagan god—burned the precious child alive.

Manasseh repented in his later years, but one can only describe the bulk of his reign as exceedingly evil and ugly. Only six out of thirty-nine kings on their family tree were good. That’s only 15%, and that’s among rulers who were well-versed in God’s laws.

Politics magnifies the underlying spiritual battle. In politics we witness the perennial human struggle between good and evil played out on a larger scale. And this should come as no surprise.

The second stanza begins in verse 4:

He who sits in the heavens laughs;
the Lord holds them in derision.
Then he will speak to them in his wrath,
and terrify them in his fury, saying,
“As for me, I have set my King
on Zion, my holy hill.” (vv. 4–6)

And here’s the second truth: No one has an inherent right to rule.

God laughs in virtual disbelief that rulers who think they have an inherent right to rule, or who set themselves up as “king of the castle, kiss my feet.” It’s audacious. Ridiculous. Laughable.

God says, “I am the one who oversees kings and kingdoms. Who are you, oh puny mortal, to think that you possess any kind of power and authority.”

That doesn’t mean that there isn’t a cosmic spiritual struggle going on. At the temptation of Christ, the devil took Him up and showed Him all the kingdoms of the world in a moment of time and said to Him, “To You I will give all this authority and their glory, for it has been delivered to me, and I give it to whom I will. If then You will worship me, Jesus, all this will be Yours.” (see Matt. 4:9)

Some of what Satan said was true. Satan does have authority over kingdoms, and he does give them to who he wills, and does give them to those who are loyal to him. However, as for the devil’s normal modus operandi, it’s only a partial truth which actually amounts to a sinister lie.

Satan does grant authority to rulers, but the truth is: God is sovereign over how much authority Satan has and whom Satan grants authority to. The devil admitted as much when he used the passive voice saying, “To You I will give all this authority for it has been delivered to me.”

Which, of course, begs the question: “Who delivered it to you, Satan? Who sets the boundaries of your power? Who is boss, even though you rebel against His rule and slink around, killing and stealing and destroying?

When Pilot asked Jesus, “Do you not know that I have authority to release You and authority to crucify You?” 

Jesus said, “Ha! You would have no authority at all unless it had been given to you from above.”

All authority is delegated by Father God. There is no authority except from God, we’re told in Romans chapter 13. No one has inherent right to rule:

• not governments
• not politicians
• not judges
• not supervisors
• not employers
• not pastors
• not teachers
• not husbands
• not parents

God entrusts us as stewards of His authority. The authority ultimately does not belong to the human. It belongs to God.Government is not a right. It is a God-given responsibility, and it’s ridiculous to think otherwise, laughable even.

When they were in their early thirties, three of the four royals found themselves in hot water, or maybe I should say, hot fire, when some snitches ratted them out to King Nebuchadnezzar for not bowing down at the dedication of the twenty-story high gold image he had built of himself. And magnanimously, Nebuchadnezzar gives them a second chance.

He says, “If you fall down and worship the image that I have made of myself, well and good. But if you do not worship, you shall immediately be cast into a burning fiery furnace. And who is the God who will deliver you out of my hands?” (Dan. 3:15)

Do you know how the three royals responded? They laughed. They laughed. They answered and said to the king,

“Oh, Nebuchadnezzar, we have no need to answer you in this matter. If this be so, our God whom we serve is able to deliver us from the burning fiery furnace, and he will deliver us out of your hand, oh king. But if not, be it known to you, oh king, that we will not serve your gods or worship the golden image that you have set up.” (Dan. 3:16–18)

Essentially, they have the same sort of response to Nebuchadnezzar’s Bobby-Big-Wheel bluster that we see in second stanza of Psalm 2. They scoffed at him in derision.

“We have no need to answer you in this matter. You tore us away from our homes, our loved ones, our community, our culture. You used our talents for your selfish gain. You destroyed our future and our dreams of a family. You destroyed our city and tore down our temple. And with the gold you pilfered, you built an image of yourself and you expect us to bow down and worship it? You’ve taken everything from us that a ruler can take. Everything. But you cannot take the place of our God. (applause)

“The audacity! Who do you think you are? God can rescue us, and even if He chooses not to, He is still God, and you are not God.”

You know who made an appearance in the fiery furnace to put an exclamation on that claim? The King of kings!

As we heard last night, down the road, the Lord afflicted Nebuchadnezzar with a humiliating mental illness until he finally acknowledged that God, the Most High, rules the kingdom of man and gives it to whom He will. He is the God who rules over kings. He is the God who rules over history.

No one has an inherent right to rule. Anyone who goes on a power trip thinking that authority is an inherent right rather than a God-given responsibility is laughably misguided.

Truth number three: God’s Son is King over all.

The third stanza starts in verse 7:

I will tell of the decree:
The Lord said to me, “You are my Son;
today I have begotten you.
Ask of me, and I will make the nations your heritage,
and the ends of the earth your possession.
You shall break them with a rod of iron
and dash them in pieces like a potter's vessel. (vv. 7–9)

Now, theologians say that the words in this stanza were formally declared by the new Davidic king after he was anointed during the coronation ceremony.

The world will soon witness the pomp and ceremony of a British coronation when King Charles is officially coronated as king.

During the Jewish coronation ceremony, the incoming monarch was given a decree as part of the ceremony. He’s given a legal document that validated his new status, like a wedding certificate, or a marriage certificate at a wedding.

The document that the king was given cited God’s new covenant . . . God’s covenant commitment, the dynasty of David, as well as the newly coronated king’s commitment to God. At the heart of this covenant agreement was the concept of sonship. The human partner in the covenant, the newly crowned king, was certified as son of the covenant, God who was his father. And the pronouncement, “You are my son,” marked a renewal of the family relationship between God and David’s descendants each time a new king was crowned.

“Today I have begotten you,” is metaphorical language that implies a new birth takes place during the coronation. During the ceremony, the incoming monarch was spiritually begotten as the firstborn son of the nation. By God’s decree, he became the representative head of all of the siblings in the family. This appointment placed on his shoulders the responsibility to serve as their example, to look out for their well-being, and to help them obey the directives of their heavenly Father.

Most Judean kings failed miserably at fulfilling their responsibility of firstborn son. Truth is: no human could really fulfill that role. But Psalm 2 and the book of Daniel prophetically point to a time of the Messiah, when a perfect firstborn son would begin to reign over an everlasting spiritual kingdom, a time when God the Father would establish a new covenant in which Jesus Christ, God’s Son, would be begotten, coronated as King over all.

And according to Hebrews 5:5, Christ did not exalt Himself to this position. God the Father appointed Him by the decree. God actually spoke the words of the coronation psalm over Jesus. He said, “You are My Son,” said God the Father to the King of the new covenant. “Today I have begotten You.”

He seated Christ on the throne, far above all rule and authority and power and dominion, above every name that is named, not only in this age, but also in the one to come.

Throughout history people have stood up in respect whenever a sovereign entered the room, that’s tradition, or whenever a sovereign rose from sitting to standing. It was a way to symbolically affirm the monarch’s higher position.

It’s said that King George II was present at the first performance of the oritorial, Handel’s Messiah,” in London in the mid-1700s. And when the choir began to sing the “Hallelujah Chorus: King of kings. Lord of lords. Hallelujah. Hallelujah. King of kings. He shall reign forever and ever.”

You know what happened? King George jumped to his feet. He stood to respect the King of kings who is King even over him. And when King George stood, everyone stood. And the tradition of standing during the performance of the “Hallelujah Chorus” continues to this day.

And that brings us to the final truth. Truth number four: We owe our highest allegiance to the Highest King.

Verse 10:

Now therefore, O kings, be wise;
be warned, O rulers of the earth.
Serve the Lord with fear,
and rejoice with trembling.
Kiss the Son,
lest he be angry, and you perish in the way,
for his wrath is quickly kindled.
Blessed are all who take refuge in him.” (vv. 10–12)

All you people in positions of authority: be warned. Everyone owes their highest allegiance to the Highest King. Rulers will answer to God for how they exercised their God-given authority. God gets angry with anyone who exercises authority in an unjust, unkind, self-serving, oppressive manner.

A pastor who lords it over his congregation, a husband who abuses his wife, a politician who governs with two sets of rules. Be warned: this makes God’s blood boil. His wrath is quickly kindled. And when it comes to the misuse of authority, sooner or later, He will bring you down.

Rulers will answer to God for how they exercise authority, and all of us will answer to Him for how we respond to authority.

And there’s a tension that exists here. We have an obligation before God to be respectful and amenable towards human authority. But our highest loyalty is to the Highest King.

So when earthly rulers contradict God, if the earthly rules say, “No,” when God says, “Yes,” or “Yes,” when God says, “No,” what are we to do?

It’s not an easy answer. And we wrestle with this. And I think the four Jewish royals often wrestled with the question.

And the book of Daniel recants three occasions when they pushed back. As teenagers, they told the chief eunuch they didn’t want to eat what the king was putting on their plates.

In their thirties, Daniel’s three friends refused to bow to the golden image. That’s when the king threw a fit and threw them into the fiery furnace.

In his early eighties, it was Daniel’s turn. He got tossed into the lions’ den when King Darius made it illegal to pray.

And those are probably just the most notable occasions. I dare to say that there were dozens of times when the exiles had to wrestle with the question of whether they were going to obey the reigning king or the King of kings. They served their earthly rules with integrity to the best of their ability.

But when push came to shove, they knew that they owed their highest allegiance to the King of kings. It was their loyalty to the King of kings that gave them the courage to stand against Nebuchadnezzar’s edict when everyone else took a knee and bowed. And they did so knowing that doing so might cost them their lives.

And that’s the kind of commitment that Christ’s kingship demands of us.

I think of John Bunyan, a seventeenth century Puritan preacher. The government told him it was illegal for him to preach because he hadn’t been authorized by the Church of England to do so. He didn’t have the right papers.

And when he continued to preach, they threw him in jail. He could have freed himself at any time if he would have promised not to publicly share the gospel, but he refused. He told authorities that he would rather stay imprisoned until moss grew on his eyebrows than violate the commitment to share Christ.

He stayed in jail for twelve years until the law he had broken was finally repealed. To him, Christ was worth it. His loyalty was to the highest King.

And I ask myself: Is mine?

When pressed, will I have the courage and conviction to stand? Is Christ truly my King? Is my heart loyal to Him above all? Is yours?

I’m so grateful for the Corrie ten Booms and the Dietrich Bonhoeffers, the Amy Carmichaels, and the William Wilberforces.

I am grateful for the great cloud of witnesses cited in Hebrews chapter 11, who, through faith, conquered kingdoms, enforced justice, obtained promises, stopped the mouths of lions, quenched the power of the fire, escaped the edge of the sword, were made strong out of weakness, became mighty in war, put foreign armies to fight, and received their dead back to life.

But truth be told, I am even more grateful for those in the list who, through faith, were tortured, refused to accept release, those who were mocked and flogged and chained and imprisoned. Those who were martyred and stoned and sawn in two, killed with the sword. Those whose allegiance to Jesus led to financial ruin and social blackballing. Those who were afflicted, mistreated, silenced and persecuted. Those who were forced to flee and wander about with no place to call home, of whom Scripture says, “The world is not worthy.”

The ones who took a stand, knowing that they might pay the consequences are my heroes because we will need that kind of strength and resolve when the time comes, and I sense it is near.

During the past couple of years, I have often had to counsel my soul to do what the last phrase of Psalm chapter 2, advises: Take refuge. Take shelter. Take refuge in Him. “Blessed are all who take refuge in him.” (v. 12)

Really, that’s the only way to find peace and joy and strength and resolve in uncertain and tumultuous times, political or personal.

This world throws all kinds of evil and ugly things our way, and things might get a whole lot worse. But I hope that you will take comfort and find strength and anchor yourself in the truth of Psalm chapter 2.

I want to encourage you, dear sisters, in this turbulent time to stand firm. Take refuge in Christ and cling to His promises because the coronation of Jesus Christ changes everything. (applause) Christ has been coronated as King. I want you to declare that with me: Christ has been coronated as King.

You can thrive in times of political turmoil because, say it with me: Christ has been coronated as King.

You need not fear any pandemic. Why? Because Christ has been coronated as King.

You can laugh at oppressive rules and regulations. Why? Because Christ has been coronated as King.

You don’t need to worry about rising gas prices or panic when you lose your job. Christ has been coronated as King.

You can face power shortages and empty grocery store shelves because Christ has been coronated as King.

You can remain calm when troubles come because Christ has been coronated as King.

You can bravely stand when others are bowing because Christ has been coronated as King.

You can be delivered from the powers of darkness that have haunted you because Christ is coronated as King.

You can sing heaven’s praises when you’re going through hell because Christ has been coronated as King.

You can walk free of the chains that bind you because Christ has been coronated as King.

You can have hope in the most hopeless situation. Why? Because Christ has been coronated as King.

You can find comfort when your heart is broken. You need not lie awake with worry. You can face every tomorrow with courage and confidence. Why? Because Christ has been coronated as King.

Is He your King? Because Christ is the King, and He gets the last move. And we know how the story will end.

One day He will ride forth on a white horse, brandishing a massive sword. He’ll come in fury to take down Satan and evil regimes and evil rules and every enemy of the cross, to put an end to war and to bloodshed, poverty, famine, sickness and death, violence, rape, abuse, and oppression. He will take them all down.

He will wipe every tear from our eyes, and He will reign on His heavenly throne in the Holy City where we will dwell with Him forever.

Don’t you long for it? Doesn’t all the political craziness and sin and ugliness of the world make you long for the King and for His kingdom?

Whenever I lament with my dad about what the government is doing, he reminds me to take comfort in the fact that regardless of what happens on the political landscape, I can be confident that God rules the course of history.

My dad often says these words, and I can’t even count the number of times he has exhorted me. “Mary, this is not our home.”

My dad will be going home soon. He’s going to make his final journey, where? Across the great sea to Königsberg, the king’s mountain, the place that will satisfy his longing in a way that his beloved childhood home never could.

I want to close with a poem he wrote in the epilogue of his memoirs. I’ll read you the English version, which doesn’t quite capture the beauty and depth of the German, but I think you’ll catch the emotion.

The poem is called, “Longing for Home.”

It hits me suddenly at night,
Confronting me with all its might
My wildest dreams could not foresee
The agony it brings to me, t
This Longing.

Fog upon the waters hover
Clouds descend and reason cover.
Frightful. Dark. With such control
Falling heavy on my soul
This Longing.

Alas, that burg no more exists,
Fell prey to foreign soldiers’ fist
But shadows draw me ever more
To reminisce on the distant shore
This Longing.

Stronger grows its inky hold
Wraps me helpless in its fold
Lurid down the slipp'ry slope
Mercilessly beyond all hope
This Longing.

Slowly doth the sun arise
Rays of peace for troubled eyes
For God in His abundant grace
Whispers of a better place.
Invulnerable to time and space
It calls us home
This Longing.

("Longing for Home" by Ulrich Karl Thomas)

Amen.

Will you all stand, please? I would just like to pray.

Heavenly Father, You are the King of kings and the Lord of lords. We yearn for Your rule. We yearn for Your rule in our world. But even more so, we yearn for Your rule in our hearts. And we know that You are King—King of kings and Lord of lords, hallelujah, hallelujah. Amen.